Incredible difficulty spike

[iamnid]

Well, I did all the levels and their alternates and found a few secret bees. I'm trying the impossible lair with 42 bees. I can't get more than 42% through. Every time you die you have to start all over... that's about 5 minutes from where i keep dying. The difficulty spike at the end is insane. Even if I go back and find everything, that will only give me 4 more hits. I hope an update addresses this or I just won't ever finish this game.

[[{******---Dead4Life---******}]]

Originally posted by Palmer Eldritch:

Originally posted by Dead4Life The Original:

Ah I see you got frustrated with this game. I didn't play it a lot recently, but I can see some sections being annoying. Good points there as well. Cutscnes which can't be skipped are annoying too, but maybe they did it on purpose to punish players for loosing. Like many games have punishing systems as well, you know Dark Souls or Dead Rising. I guess that was the idea of the devs.
Oh and to be honest I never played no Sonic or Mario or Donkey Kong games, but I got a switch recently so will try some nintendo stuff out.
Well hopefully one day you'll try one final time to play Yuka and get that platinum. lol Good luck bro.

After the 62nd try I actually managed to finish this stage with 0 bees left in my bag. The next big thing for me will be the run without any bees, lol : D
Hell no. Played the game on Xbox Game Pass, I always wanted it for the Switch because Nintendo will not probably give us a new Donkey Kong Country in the upcoming time. But since it was out on Game Pass and there are achievements, I downloaded the game.

I will stay true to my comment above, even after finishing it. I do not like the idea of such a brutal level without any accessibility options. You can do it the hard way or you can do it the impossible way. This From Software mentality is now a big part of western gamers. A friend of mine only plays a game if the most hard difficulty is available at the start of the game as an example.

I like a good challenge like in Celeste. There is something for every skill level. Even "The Impossible Lair" stage could be fun if better designed. Better placed checkpoints (before and after each boss fight) and the skippable dialogue before a boss fight starts. Yes, I do think you can make this stage actually pretty entertaining. For me, it wasn't fun and it wasn't entertaining. It's a hard contrast in an otherwise pretty good to even brillant platformer.

Awesome, I knew you will do it. With hard work comes reward.
Yeah Demons Soul's started all that trend, I like them too but I don't find them amazing either. Just ok. The story is like whatever, environments are nice... but I don't dig them much...
Well then, I still didn't start the game, been playing too many others for now.... but cool.

[Flo Automata]

I like the concept behind the Impossible Lair, but they better have used it as DLC for the main game, and not as part of the story.

I finished the normal stages without having any trouble, but the Lair is a different story. It's like a completely different game in the game, and you can't finish the game without finishing the lair...

Most i'm afraid that most people will never buy a Sequel because of this design decision. I really would ignore another game, and that is bad for a small and sympatic studio what Playtonic is. I was growing up with Donkey Kong Country and all the other stuff, finished all their games with 100%.

But the Impossible Lair is just ridiciolous. Each part of the Lair is much to long.

It's just bad game design, because 99% of this game are Single Stages, hard, short and very good. Changing that formula at the end makes no sense. It's like stabbing you in the back, after you finished most of the stages.
This game really need's another nerf, or patch, with enough checkpoints for average players, having not much time to waste hours only with training an single dungeon. Give the better players their Platin or Gold achievement. I really don't care. Games are made for fun, and it's ok to spend a mode for Pros. But it's not ok to troll people with such an design break.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by Aexcaliber:

I like the concept behind the Impossible Lair, but they better have used it as DLC for the main game, and not as part of the story.

I finished the normal stages without having any trouble, but the Lair is a different story. It's like a completely different game in the game, and you can't finish the game without finishing the lair...

Most i'm afraid that most people will never buy a Sequel because of this design decision. I really would ignore another game, and that is bad for a small and sympatic studio what Playtonic is. I was growing up with Donkey Kong Country and all the other stuff, finished all their games with 100%.

But the Impossible Lair is just ridiciolous. Each part of the Lair is much to long.

It's just bad game design, because 99% of this game are Single Stages, hard, short and very good. Changing that formula at the end makes no sense. It's like stabbing you in the back, after you finished most of the stages.
This game really need's another nerf, or patch, with enough checkpoints for average players, having not much time to waste hours only with training an single dungeon. Give the better players their Platin or Gold achievement. I really don't care. Games are made for fun, and it's ok to spend a mode for Pros. But it's not ok to troll people with such an design break.

This isn't bad design, it's simply unorthodox, but it follows a specific and reasonable logic which was discussed over a lot pages. You stabbed yourself in the back by ignoring the impossible lair until finish. There is a reason why you get set every new playsession next to the lair, you incrementally increase your odds of surviving by collecting bees in the game. The lair was your goal from start to finish, but you left your goal out of sight and now you're overwhelmed by it.

Don't blame the game for your own shortcomings other people have fun because of the lair, ruin it by nerfing it even further is pretty unfair to the developers and undermines its concept, the lair already losed a lot of it's touch and meaning with the first nerf.

[Palmer Eldritch]

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

Originally posted by Aexcaliber:

I like the concept behind the Impossible Lair, but they better have used it as DLC for the main game, and not as part of the story.

I finished the normal stages without having any trouble, but the Lair is a different story. It's like a completely different game in the game, and you can't finish the game without finishing the lair...

Most i'm afraid that most people will never buy a Sequel because of this design decision. I really would ignore another game, and that is bad for a small and sympatic studio what Playtonic is. I was growing up with Donkey Kong Country and all the other stuff, finished all their games with 100%.

But the Impossible Lair is just ridiciolous. Each part of the Lair is much to long.

It's just bad game design, because 99% of this game are Single Stages, hard, short and very good. Changing that formula at the end makes no sense. It's like stabbing you in the back, after you finished most of the stages.
This game really need's another nerf, or patch, with enough checkpoints for average players, having not much time to waste hours only with training an single dungeon. Give the better players their Platin or Gold achievement. I really don't care. Games are made for fun, and it's ok to spend a mode for Pros. But it's not ok to troll people with such an design break.

This isn't bad design it's simply unorthodox, but it follows a specific and reasonable logic which was discussed over a lot pages. Just read it if you don't unterstand.

Don't blame the game for your own shortcomings other people have fun because of the lair, ruin it by nerfing it even further is pretty unfair, the lair already losed a lot of it's touch and meaning.

Dude, you're still so full of yourself. You do not represent the almighty opinion here. Like myself, he have valid points. Like your own opinion, it's totally legit to not like this game design. I've finished the lair after many complaints and I also say, I do not need this a second time. Yes, you can have much fun with the game without ever touching the lair. But you will finish it after you've done so much in the game. Without watering down something, you can make this level more fun if you give the players more options in difficulty. You have the Near Impossible Lair and the even harder Impossible Lair. Just give people a third option, like the Total possible Lair, yeah, make fun of the players, challenge them, but give them options. Are they forced to give people options? No, of course not, like From Software they do not have to give us difficulty options at all. But The Impossible Lair as a whole game is not build up on this premise. It's a challenging but fun game but you do not expect such a huge difficulty spike. Another great game completely ruined by questionable game design is Cyber Shadow. I think, you either are completely From Software or give people a few options that they can at least finish what they started.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by Palmer Eldritch:

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

This isn't bad design it's simply unorthodox, but it follows a specific and reasonable logic which was discussed over a lot pages. Just read it if you don't unterstand.

Don't blame the game for your own shortcomings other people have fun because of the lair, ruin it by nerfing it even further is pretty unfair, the lair already losed a lot of it's touch and meaning.

Dude, you're still so full of yourself. You do not represent the allmighty opinion here. Like myself, he have valid points. Like your own opinion, it's totally legit to not like this game design. I've finished the lair after many complaints and I also say, I do not need this a second time. Yes, you can have much fun with the game without ever touching the lair. But you will finish it after you've done so much in the game. Without watering down something, you can make this level more fun if you give the players more options in difficulty. You have the Near Impossible Lair and the even harder Impossible Lair. Just give people a third option, like the Total possible Lair, yeah, make fun of the players, challenge them, but give them options. Are they forced to give people options? No, of course not, like From Software they do not have to give us difficulty options at all. But The Impossible Lair as a whole game is not build up on this premise. It's a challenging but fun game but you do not expect such a huge difficulty spike. Another great game completely ruined by questionable game design is Cyber Shadow. I think, you either are completely From Software or give people a few options that they can at least finish what they started.

The game is not entitled to cater to your preferences and not every game needs to cater to all perferences.
You two simply didn't understand what the developers had in mind with the lair, so you critisize it on a false premise. (why I know it? Because you played it wrong!)
The fact is you are just a small minority, while an way much larger majority finished the game without letting out an opinion overall.

This was a controversial gameplay decision, but what you two demand is that a game has to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.
The games name is "The impossible Lair" it was supposed to be the main dish, now it's just an extra challenge almost no one is interested on finishing.

The game introduced you fairly early on what it is about, but you became so much distracted that you totally forgot about the lair, if you critisize an developer, respect its intention, beating the lair was supposed to be an meaningful accomplishment with just more options you simply dilute the games premise and blur it's focus.

I also don't understand why you give FromSoft a pass, but not this game, either you are for total inclusion since you argument with the "more players is always good" thought-terminating clichee, or you let the developers do their thing.
Their is no "general rule" how a game has to be designed, telling "this is bad game design" tells more about you than about the game. On my perspective you are the ones who seem "too much full of themselves"

I wish more people would just respect gamedesign-desicion and try to figure out why they were made instead of just complaining because they are mad, pls never write about a game when you are mad.

When I think about how they can improve the game I would rather suggest the game should better communicate what it is about, I suddenly understood and developed a certain expectation, which others may lack and i'm pretty sure how you see the impossible lair in the end depends on these expectations.

edit: don't get me wrong i'm not argumenting that games should be designed so that only a few chosen players can beat it, except when this was in developers mind, which I believe is still not the case for Yooka-Laylee, what I really simply despise is when people try to apply a certain standard to every game, which only leads to leveling down potentially interesting decisions.
Ultimatively this will just lead to boring games and I can assure you without the impossible lair my opinion of this game would be way less. This is something which made the game special to me, especially BECAUSE there is no easy way out like in 99% of other games. And since I also view games as an art i'm interested that games preserve their unique traits. (something which is less and less the case nowadays)

[Flo Automata]

Well, i've finished the game today. I had 6 bees left. But it don't change my mind about the Lair. I never would say, this was easy in the end, because it wasn't. And it has not to be easy, to say it clear. But as i said. It's not feeling whole in the end. The Lair is an interesting aspect, and a very challenging dungeon, and - even, lot of fun, i've never expiered before.
It's good this one has checkpoints. So the best way to finish the lair is to try the first two parts again and again, to save as much bee's as possible. I had original 34 bees, when reaching the second area. Repeating the first area, stocking up to 40, and then doing the same with the second area. But it was hard. 21 trys.

As said last time. I really like the Idea behind the Lair. It's a challenging, cool designed level.

And still, it doesn't feel right placed. It's like uniting two opposites. A well made "easy" single-stage Plattformer with an nice Hub-world on one side, and the Impossible Lair on the opposite.

It's not the same way developers designed games in the good-old times.

You could only see the true final boss from Contra 3 on Hardmode. But you could finish the game on easy or normal, just without the final form.
Gunstar Future Heroes also benefited players for choosing higher difficulties. You could finish the game on easy (and this was hard enough), but not the full story, because on easy, many story- and boss-parts are missing. On Hardmode, that game was incredible. But it was an awesome game, and you wanted to get better, just to see more. Finishing on easy wasn't enough.

In my opinion, that should have been the way for Impossible Lair. A possible and gentle Ending for everyone, fighting just Captial B, but an additional competition for the hardcore gamers with an special achievement for their pride. Ok, i have nothing from my achivement because i've played it on Switch.
Talking about the FromSoftware Games. From is a good exsample that it's possible to finish most of their vanilla games. The hardest bosses and areas are waiting in the DLCs. And there is a good reason why...

[MoondogZero]

For the love of god. We have been through this ad nauseum. This is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE game design.

Please refer to the conversation upthread.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by MoondogZero:

We have been through this ad nauseum.

Who are you for deciding that? Can't you just say that you don't like it instead of upheave your opinion to some sort of standard? I wouldn't contend if you would formulate your opinion in an more subjective manner.

Now I can understand much better Aexcalibers opinion in his most common post. I understand why it feels out of place for him.
If you ask me they could enhance the game by making the standard levels slightly more difficult, however actually they can be difficult too, if you play with the tonic that grants you only one checkpoint in the middle of the level, which i've done pretty early on for the rest of the game.

Like I said the idea of the impossible lair was that you try it throughout your play time again and again coming further each playthrough, not only at the end when you have the maximum amount of bees, The rest of the levels is just preperation so you can accustom to the controls and gather the needed ressources, they are like a playground to prepare you for the actual challenge in the game. If you don't forget the impossible and try it again and again, you probably will appreciate the design approach a bit more. Maybe the game failed to communicate that, maybe it should've forced you playing it, some time and time again.

This concept isn't new, games like Chrono Trigger, Soul Sacrifice & Breath of the Wild do something similiar, although the last one utterly failed in that approach by making Castle Hyrule and the final boss too easy if you have discovered too much of the game resulting in an pretty anticlimatic finale, you can't say that to the impossible lair, it can be everything but definitely not anticlimatic.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

The game is not entitled to cater to your preferences and not every game needs to cater to all perferences.
You two simply didn't understand what the developers had in mind with the lair, so you critisize it on a false premise. (why I know it? Because you played it wrong!)
The fact is you are just a small minority, while an way much larger majority finished the game without letting out an opinion overall.

This was a controversial gameplay decision, but what you two demand is that a game has to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.
The games name is "The impossible Lair" it was supposed to be the main dish, now it's just an extra challenge almost no one is interested on finishing.

The game introduced you fairly early on what it is about, but you became so much distracted that you totally forgot about the lair, if you critisize an developer, respect its intention, beating the lair was supposed to be an meaningful accomplishment with just more options you simply dilute the games premise and blur it's focus.

You just summed up one of the biggest problems with modern society, that being people thinking they're entitled to everything and that all products in general should be designed for everyone, which in itself is a mistake because if it's designed for everyone, it's designed for nobody.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I don't like fighting games, they don't really appeal to me as I find its gameplay not that interesting, but I don't want them to redesign those types of games to appeal to me seeing as I have plenty of other options to choose from instead, whereas I'll let fans of these games enjoy them how they want.

Kind of like how, as much as I love platformers, I don't really enjoy Mega Man games either due to their high difficulty and kind of weird design choices here and there, but I at least understand what makes them good and why people love them in the first place, they're just not for me, which is fine seeing as I have other games to play instead.

So how does it all relate to this game? Because they tried a very original, unique idea for a game that, while it's not for everyone, is a very interesting concept I don't think I've seen in other platformers before. Furthermore, that shouldn't take away from the rest of the game. If you can't beat it, you can feel satisfied finishing the 20 main levels instead and leaving it at that.

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

edit: don't get me wrong i'm not argumenting that games should be designed so that only a few chosen players can beat it, except when this was in developers mind, which I believe is still not the case for Yooka-Laylee, what I really simply despise is when people try to apply a certain standard to every game, which only leads to leveling down potentially interesting decisions.
Ultimatively this will just lead to boring games and I can assure you without the impossible lair my opinion of this game would be way less. This is something which made the game special to me, especially BECAUSE there is no easy way out like in 99% of other games. And since I also view games as an art i'm interested that games preserve their unique traits. (something which is less and less the case nowadays)

100% agreed. The biggest problem in this day and age is the lack of originality, creativity and unique ideas which this game at least had going for, which for the most part pretty much started in the 7th gen of gaming and has only gotten worse since. And absolutely, video games are indeed a form of art, they're just the newest form of art out there that still requires a bit more time, knowledge and experimentation to fully understand and realise their true potential like they have with movies and books since neither of those things have quite happened with video games yet.

[MoondogZero]

No no. I can't say that I just don't like it. The game creates its own standard by which it should be judged. By that standard, it is poorly designed. This is not a subjective opinion about what I do and do not like, this is a claim about quality based on consistency. A game that is misleading and inconsistent with itself is poorly designed.

Fortunately the developer agreed with me.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by MoondogZero:

No no. I can't say that I just don't like it. The game creates its own standard by which it should be judged. By that standard, it is poorly designed. This is not a subjective opinion about what I do and do not like, this is a claim about quality based on consistency. A game that is misleading and inconsistent with itself is poorly designed.

Fortunately the developer agreed with me.

You may have a point that the rest of the game is easier, but that doesn't mean you can't design a game around the premise what is and what's not,
their are no rules in particular and I already explained how this standard you call it, can be understood, you may simply grasped it the wrong way.
You have a notion how a game has to be like, but you have to get rid of this notion or you won't ever appreciate special qualities and higher arts. That the developers changed it just means they had to compensate their art for the masses. You can't say if they have your opinion or not, they changed it but if they've done it because of conviction or because they had uphold the appeal of the game is unknown. Just because it's a compromise doesn't mean the developer shares your perspective in the end they have to make money to stay alive.

Either way some part of the originality of this game is gone and never comes back.

[MoondogZero]

They said specifically that they changed the Impossible Lair because it was more important to them that more players could complete the game. Precisely what I was originally criticizing them for. The game was designed with the intention of the Impossible Lair being initially impossible, but by collecting all of the bees during the game the Impossible Lair was intended to be doable by the vast majority of players.

They failed at what they intended. They admitted it. They rectified it.

I think they should have left the Impossible Lair as it was originally designed along with the version with Checkpoints, but that's another story.

Designing a game such that any player of any ability level can complete all but the final level and then lock completion behind a wildly out of character final level... that is not a new and praise-worthy development in the history of gaming, or "high art". It is asinine. It is bad game design. The developers have admitted it. Please, just let it go.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by MoondogZero:

They said specifically that they changed the Impossible Lair because it was more important to them that more players could complete the game. Precisely what I was originally criticizing them for. The game was designed with the intention of the Impossible Lair being initially impossible, but by collecting all of the bees during the game the Impossible Lair was intended to be doable by the vast majority of players.

They failed at what they intended. They admitted it. They rectified it.

I think they should have left the Impossible Lair as it was originally designed along with the version with Checkpoints, but that's another story.

Designing a game such that any player of any ability level can complete all but the final level and then lock completion behind a wildly out of character final level... that is not a new and praise-worthy development in the history of gaming, or "high art". It is asinine. It is bad game design. The developers have admitted it. Please, just let it go.

Can you pls send the source for this?

Well they may have intended that but they underestimated how much players sucks at these days. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The thing is now you have the opposite effect, the lair is NOT LONGER impossible when you play it for the first time when you collect no bee's at all since with all the checkpoints, higher-skilled players can beat it quite fast from the get-go, so their explanation how you described it to me, doesn't turn out right at the other end.
In fact the whole name of the games doesn't make much sense anymore.

There will be always players being bad at something that's not a shame, all I can say that this is not the Rareware I know, the Rare from back then wouldn't give a ♥♥♥♥,
their games had some kind of edginess that has gone totally lost with Playtonic.
That showed me that Playtonic is not a game studio that is worthy to support for me anymore.

[Dangerous Beans]

Originally posted by MoondogZero:

I think they should have left the Impossible Lair as it was originally designed along with the version with Checkpoints, but that's another story.

It's still there. Just select the first starting point into the Not So Impossible Lair. As far as I understand that's functionally identical to the original version.

The only real downside (for some players) of the update was that it made the "HIVE won!" and "Plan Beaten" achievements much more common. I can understand if that makes people unhappy who had soldiered through the game before. One could argue that they should have rather added a new achievement for beating the hive using checkpoints.

[MoondogZero]

Originally posted by Dangerous Beans:

It's still there. Just select the first starting point into the Not So Impossible Lair. As far as I understand that's functionally identical to the original version.

The only real downside (for some players) of the update was that it made the "HIVE won!" and "Plan Beaten" achievements much more common. I can understand if that makes people unhappy who had soldiered through the game before. One could argue that they should have rather added a new achievement for beating the hive using checkpoints.

From my understanding, the two current options are 1: "The Not So Impossible Lair" that includes checkpoints and you can bring your bees in with you as armor/hit points and 2: "The Impossible Lair" that you can't take any collected bees in with you so if you take a hit and lose Laylee, and take another, you have to start from the beginning.

The original titular level was such that you could take all the bees you collected in with you as armor/hit points, but there were no checkpoints, so every time you died you had to start at the beginning again, but you could proceed much farther each attempt as you could take in with you as many bees as there are in the game (48, I believe?). This format fits the narrative of the game perfectly as I've outlined above (the collected bees making the Impossible Lair very much possible), but the level's difficulty hideously undermines and destroys the narrative since the 48 bees that were intended to be enough for most players turned out to not be enough at all for far too many.

Doing the Impossible Lair with no bees was an optional challenge and could only be achieved on a new save file when first encountering it before the rest of the game started. If the Impossible Lair currently is a "no bee run" then it totally goes against the narrative of the game.

Although the addition of checkpoints saves the game from being the train wreck of bad design it started out as, I find the way they did it to be less than completely satisfactory.